The Standards and Testing Agency is responsible for developing the National Curriculum tests on behalf of the Department for Education. In December 2014, SQA was awarded an STA contract to carry out part of the trialling process to assess the performance and validity of test items for future National Curriculum assessments at Key Stage 2.

The trial involved more than 5,000 pupils across 200 schools in England and gathered quantitative and qualitative information on the performance of test papers in four subjects:

English Reading

English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

Mathematics

Science

The final report was delivered to the Standards and Testing Agency on 2 October 2015.